APK: On the practice of Trotskyism

Edited slightly.

En Marcha  #2027, November 30 to December 6, 2022  [ pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article12202 ]

Central Organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador  

On the Practice of Trotskyism

The political practice of Trotskyism during its almost 100 years of existence has unmasked it worldwide as a counterrevolutionary current, usually linked to the police apparatuses in different countries. Its central purpose is to combat Marxist-Leninist positions, for which it uses a pseudo-radical language, full of infamy, lies and analysis that border on delirium. In our country, the organizational presence of Trotskyism is non-existent; when at a certain point it had an organizational expression it could not penetrate the workers' and popular movement, due to the nature of its approaches that were far from reality and – above all – contrary to the interests of the working class.  

To learn about some aspects of this opportunist current, we reproduce excerpts from the article "On the Practice of Trotskyism", written by Comrade Klaus Riis, leader of the Communist Workers' Party of Denmark, APK [ apk2000.dk/en/welcome-to-apk/ ].  

"Permanent hopelessness" 

A major component of Trotskyism is the theory of permanent revolution, which appears as the very key to the solution of the problems of the world revolution. In fact, it should be called the theory of permanent hopelessness, because it concretely denies the possibility of the victory of the revolution and the construction of socialism in a concrete country.  

In short, the basis of the theory of permanent revolution is the particular Trotskyist analysis of imperialism. This analysis claims that with the outbreak of the First World War the death knell of all national programs had sounded: the hour of world revolution had arrived and it must be understood as a world process, a global explosion or rather a chain in which capitalism is replaced by socialism on a world scale.  

According to this theory, imperialism has broken all national borders and has become a whole that cannot be broken step by step. This is justified by capitalism's objective tendency towards the internationalization of the world economy and the domination of all key positions of capitalism by the monopolies. A simultaneous world revolt against capitalism is therefore the necessary manner that the transition from capitalism to socialism must take. The task of revolutionaries is to wait and prepare for this situation, having created in advance a world-based revolutionary organization to lead the revolution, a "general staff of the world revolution."  

... Therefore, no concrete revolution can prevail, and socialism cannot be built in a single country or group of countries. A revolution in one country, such as the October Revolution in Russia, can at most be the spark that ignites the world revolution. Therefore, the construction of a socialist society over a period of time in one country or in a group of countries is, by definition, an impossibility. Trotsky described the world revolution as this all-encompassing global explosion, and Trotskyists have repeatedly proclaimed that world revolution is "just around the corner," "only a few years away." It has not appeared, of course, but Trotskyism acts as the religious doomsayers who set a date for the end of the world. Every time he doesn't succeed, there will always be another possibility in the future.  

On the basis of the profoundly anti-scientific and anti-Marxist theory of revolution, Trotskyism must necessarily reject and criticize the concrete revolutions and attempts to build socialism that are actually taking place and that the working class and its allies have carried out in a number of countries in this century. None of them has been the spark that would trigger the chain explosion of world revolution.

  

Revolution and class struggle  

The crucial problem for the Trotskyists is that reality, the revolution and the real experience of the international working class do not coincide with their theories and formulas. The working class has carried out the proletarian revolution in a large number of countries, and moreover there have been a large number of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist revolutions in this century. In reality, socialism has been successfully built in one country and, subsequently, in several countries.  

First of all in the Soviet Union, which according to Trotsky's predictions had no chance of survival, even for a few years. Before Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, he predicted that the country would be crushed by the Nazi war machine. But socialism proved capable of withstanding the fascist war of aggression, the most brutal the world has ever seen.  

... Lenin's theoretical justification for the possibility of revolution triumphing and of building socialism in one country or group of countries was the uneven development of imperialism. The victory of the revolutions in Russia and later in other parts of the world and the construction of these countries as socialist societies have in practice refuted the Trotskyist theory of the impossibility of socialism (in one country).  

This is true regardless of whether they were former socialist societies in which capitalism has been restored. This is not because of the "impossibility" of socialism, but because the class struggle continues in socialist countries in the context of the pressure and subversion of imperialism and reaction to overthrow socialism.  

A revolutionary alternative?  

The Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution includes a wide range of aspects, in addition to the erroneous conception of the world revolutionary process, and the rejection of the possibility of the victory of socialism in a single country or group of countries. These other aspects of Trotskyist ideology are also fundamentally opposed to Marxism and the Leninist theory of revolution. The ideology is based on a lack of confidence in the victory of the revolution in a single country or group of countries and on distrust in the ability of the working class to rally allies for revolution, both in individual countries and around the world. It denies a development by stages of concrete revolutions and of the different elements of the revolutionary world process. It denies the need for a revolutionary strategy and tactic based on the stage of development of each country at any given time and on the objective revolutionary tasks it faces. Therefore, it underestimates the importance of general democratic tasks, the importance of the national, anti-imperialist and democratic aspect in the revolutionary development of the world. It substitutes a complex formulation of strategy and tactics based on the national and international balance of power – including the creation of the broadest possible class and popular alliances and a broad and concrete political program for the revolutionary movement in a given country – with schematic revolutionary formulas which, according to Trotskyists, are applicable everywhere."